


Dave: Be the Knight. Do the Quest.

by improbableZero



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, POV Second Person, Rose Lalonde Is Always Right, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 08:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/improbableZero/pseuds/improbableZero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dave Strider and things have been getting pretty same-y lately.</p>
<p>Or:</p>
<p>In Which A Knight, Bored With The Same Old Same Old, Goes On A Quest At The Behest Of His Sister Which Will Introduce Him To A New Friend And Possibly Flushed Interest. Containing Descriptions Of Battles With Nasties, A Genuine Crystal Ball, A Grumpy Mage And His Enchantments, And A Kiss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dave: Be the Knight. Do the Quest.

**Author's Note:**

> how do I Dave Strider

Your name is Dave Strider and you are a knight of the Land of Heat and Clockwork. You spend most of your time wandering, saving villages from rampaging nasties, and being ironic. You avoid your brother the Prince’s court, except when expressly summoned—it’s a huge waste of time and courtiers are the most boring people you’ve ever met.

Things have been getting pretty samey lately—nasties run out of variety fast and there’s only so much land you can wander. It’s still better than court, but so are a lot of things, including that one time a nasty literally blew up in your face. You decide to visit your cousin Rose Lalonde, who lives in the neighboring Land of Light and Rain, to see if she’s turned up anything interesting since you saw her last.

”Hey! Lalonde!” you call from the base of the tower where she typically secludes herself. There’s no answer, but that’s as good as an engraved invitation from her. She’s not really the welcoming type, except passive-aggressively, but you know that if she _really_ wanted you gone you won’t even be able to find the tower.

Since you haven’t been molested by horrorterrors yet, you open the door and proceed up to Lalonde’s workroom. She’s there, of course—she always is. She doesn’t turn around when you enter, but she says, “Hello, Dave. So nice to see you again. Do sit down,” so you sit your ass down and wait patiently for her to be done with whatever Seer-type voyeuristic shit she’s up to now.

You are the best at waiting. It is you.

Finally, Lalonde sets down her crystal ball (it’s an actual fucking crystal ball, too, all white and glowy and mysterious and shit, none of that pansy-ass glass for Rose Lalonde) and turns to face you. She’s got that nearly-imperceptible smirk on her face, the one that never fails to annoy you, which is probably why she uses it so much.

“How have you been?” she asks.

You shrug. “All right. Nothin’ much’s been goin’ down lately. You?”

She shrugs. “Much the same. I did see a lone windsprite a few days ago, though.”

“Oh yeah?” You keep the interest out of your voice—it wouldn’t do to lose your cool.

Lalonde tips her head in assent (of course she couldn’t just _nod_ like a normal person, nodding is apparently not classy and/or sarcastic enough for her). “It’s drifting around in the Land of Wind and Shade and has been there for a few weeks. It isn’t causing any major havoc, as far as I can tell—just floating around aimlessly, wandering without purpose.” She turns up her smirk a notch. You can tell she’s making a jab at you—you’re neither stupid nor unobservant—but you don’t react.

“So you think I should go track it down—’s that what you’re sayin’?” you ask.

“You’re jumping to conclusions again, Dave,” she says. “But in this case, your wild and far-flung guess was correct. You’re stagnating, I’ve noticed—you need something to break up your routine or you’ll go insane.”

You would argue, but as usual, she’s right. You hate it when that happens. You sigh. “Do I get a more precise location? The Land of Wind and Shade is a pretty big place.”

Lalonde’s smirk ratchets up another notch. “I’m afraid not. Besides, even if I could give you an exact location, the sprite would already have moved by the time you’d arrived.”

You sigh again. “Fine.” Then you turn and go, heading west towards the Land of Wind and Shade. You’ve never been before—you’ve always kept your wandering to the Land of Heat and Clockwork, really, unless you were so bored you thought you might explode.

It’s nice there—cool, breezy, damp. The locals are stupid and overdo everything, but they’re helpful enough and they’re able to direct you to some of the lone windsprite’s usual haunts. You pick one and wait for it there.

You find that waiting’s not really that boring if you’ve got something to wait for, which is nice. You’d hate to be bored on a thing specifically designed to un-bored-ify you.

That is definitely a real word and you totally didn’t just make it up.

On the fourth day of waiting, your patience pays off around noon. You’re having lunch when you hear the edge of a giggle and a gust blows the crumbs from the bread you’re eating right into your face. You curse, and you’re so glad you’ve got your shades on because crumbs to the eyes would seriously wreck your style.

“Gotcha!” There’s another giggle, the wind messes up your hair, and the leaves rustle. You get the sense that the windsprite’s gone now.

“What,” you say flatly, even though there’s no one to hear you.

Well, at least now you know for certain that the windsprite exists and it’s not just local superstition or Lalonde fucking with you (again). That’s gratifying.

It happens again the next day. You’re just getting ready to go to bed when a breeze ruffles your hair and tugs at your clothes. You freeze. “Hey there,” you say.

“Hi there! What’s your name?” the windsprite whispers in your ear.

“Dave,” you say, just as quietly. “What’s yours?” Do windsprites even have names? Is that a thing?

“John.” John’s voice is high-pitched, childish, with an edge behind it, like he’s constantly on the verge of bursting out laughing. “Nice to meet you, Dave!”

“Nice to meet you too, John,” you say, still unmoving. The hem of your tunic is fluttering in the wind. “What’s a windsprite like you doin’ all by yourself? Don’t you guys usually travel in flocks?”

Though you can’t see him, you get the sense that John droops. “It’s a long story.” The laughter in his voice is gone now, and that’s a little like a punch in the gut.

What the fuck, brain, you think. You barely know this kid.

“I got time,” you say, flopping down on your blankets and patting the space beside you (kind of an empty gesture, but you make it anyway for ironic purposes). “I got all the time in the world.”

John hesitates, but eventually the words come spilling out of the air. “Well, to start with, I’m not really a windsprite. I was human a while ago.”

“What happened?” you ask. “You bump into a magic rock or somethin’?”

John giggles. “Something like that, yeah! I bumped into a powerful mage, and I guess he must’ve been having a _really_ bad day or something, ‘cause he shouted at me for a while, then I tried to cheer him up but it didn’t work, and then he started sparking with all this red and blue, and the next thing I knew I was a gust of wind. The mage told me I was gonna be a windsprite until I could manage to meet someone without pissing them off within the first week or so. I haven’t managed it yet—well, obviously, since I’m still a bit of air! It’s not that bad,” he adds. “Just a bit frustrating sometimes.”

You glance over at where John’s voice is coming from. “Frustratin’ how?”

“Well, most people won’t talk to me,” says John. “Even though they _know_ windsprites exist. I guess they just don’t want to look crazy!”

“Can’t imagine why not,” you say, leaning back on your hands. “Some of the coolest people I know are completely batshit psycho.” You think of one batshit psycho in particular, your best friend Terezi, and sigh. You haven’t seen her in a while; you should fix that.

John giggles again. “Aw, Dave, you say the sweetest things!”

You roll your eyes. “Whatever you say, derp. Whatever you say.”

Over the next week or so, you and John talk more and more, almost every day. The time of day when John shows up and announces his presence with an ever-cheerful “Hi, Dave” varies—if there’s one thing John isn’t, it’s regular, in any sense of the word. He’s not like anyone you’ve ever met before, and you like that, you really do. He’s different and fascinating and is always coming up with new and exciting ways to scare your boots off with his invisibility and his voice right in your ear when you least expect it (you totally don’t shriek like a little bird, nope, that doesn’t happen, you are way too cool to even contemplate doing something like that), and you find yourself looking forward to chatting with him, trying not to grin when you hear his voice on the wind, missing him when he’s not there.

It’s weird, though. Last time you talked, you could’ve sworn you saw a flash of blue out of the corner of your eye. You’d like to dismiss it as the sky reflecting weirdly off a puddle or some shit, but then you remember that the Land of Wind and Shade is constantly overcast.

You’re looking for flashes of blue all through your next conversation. You don’t see any, but you can’t convince yourself that what you saw was just a trick of the light.

Later, you ask John if he ever liked the color blue.

“Well, it’s what I was wearing when I got all sprited up,” he says. You get the sense that he’s frowning. “It is a pretty cool color, though!”

You nod. “Red’s more my thing, really, but blue’s cool too.”

“I noticed that!” John’s giggle really is infectious.

You don’t hear from him after that.

About a week later, you hear this crashing and rustling in the underbrush and you stand up, readying your shitty broken sword and preparing to do battle with what’s probably a rabbit.

It’s not quite a rabbit who stumbles out into your campsite—instead, it’s a human boy, short and black-haired and dressed all in blue. You freeze like a deer in headlights the size of records, staring at this boy like an idiot.

Who even is this weirdo?

“Dave?” the boy says hesitantly, and oh, _shit_ , it’s _John_ , this boy is John, what the _fuck_?

You put away your shitty broken sword. “Hey John,” you say, outwardly maintaining your cool. “Rockin’ the corporeal body there.”

John’s giggle is just as ridiculous coming from a solid person as it was from a gust of wind. “It’s kind of weird! I guess the spell got broken ‘cause you didn’t lose your temper or anything, so thank you!”

“Looks like I’m just that cool,” you joke, and John punches you in the shoulder.

“Yeah, sure, if by cool you mean _weird_ ,” he says.

“Your _face_ is weird,” you reply. Wow, Strider, way to rock the cool there.

John sticks his tongue out. “Yours is weirder.”

You have to smile at that, at least a little, which makes John laugh again, and wow, John’s ridiculous giggle-thing is actually really adorable, the way it squishes his face up like that, how come you never noticed that before?”

You figure it might have something to do with John not having a visible face until now. Kinda hard to notice how someone’s face squishes up if that face is made of air.

You have a sudden urge to lean forward and kiss him. You resist with a healthy dose of what the fuck. You are a coolkid. Coolkids don’t just up and kiss people they met two weeks ago (has it really only been two weeks?). Nope. Kissing John is not a thing that is happening.

Except now that the idea’s entered your mind, it’s really hard to stop thinking about it. John’s talking again, something about how he’s actually gonna miss being a windsprite ‘cause it’s so much easier to sneak up on people when they can’t see you, but your attention is drawn to the movements of his lips rather than the sounds they’re making.

You feel like you’ve been hit over the head with a board labeled GET A FUCKING CLUE, STRIDER.

“Dave?” says John, breaking your train of thought. “Are you okay? You’re just kinda staring into space…”

“I really wanna kiss you right now,” you blurt out, and _shit, fuck,_ you definitely did not mean to do that, that was the most uncool thing you have ever done including the time you jumped out of a tree to see if you could fly, because that time was for ironic purposes and also you were five at the time, so it doesn’t count. Most uncool day.

John blinks. Then he grins, the corners of his mouth slowly sliding up his face, and he leans forward until he’s right in your face. His eyes are really, really blue, you notice. “Dave,” he says, his tone mock-serious even though everything else about him is grinning.

“What,” you say, not bothering to make it a question.

John tips his head forward so your foreheads bump. You’re very glad you’re not wearing your helmet. “I think that would be a really great plan,” he says, and then he kisses you, and you’ve changed your mind, this is officially the coolest day ever, even better than that time you set all of your Bro’s stupid puppets on fire.

You make a mental note to do something really nice for Lalonde sometime soon. Maybe you’ll write something impossibly, ironically corny and throw down a sick beat. She’ll love the opportunity to snark at you and your rhymes (which are, by the way, incredibly dope).

Once that mental note’s been filed safely away, you drop every thought that isn’t related to kissing John, because damn, that shit is _awesome_. John’s lips are really soft, a lot softer than you expected, and he kisses without regard for self-consciousness or common sense, flinging himself in headlong. You hold back a little, keeping it slow, letting your arms wrap around John’s waist, and that’s really nice, too—John’s warm and comfortable to hold, soft and just the right size. You think you’d purr if your mouth wasn’t occupied, and it might not even be ironic.

Finally, finally, you separate. John’s gone pink, and you think that’s the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen.

You will forever deny any accusations of blushing. You will deny it until the whole goddamned planet explodes. Coolkids do not blush. That is not how the world works. Nope. Not a thing that’s happening.

John’s expression has softened into something more closely resembling a smile than the prankster’s grin he was sporting earlier. He giggles, and that warm and fuzzy feeling in your chest has _got_ to be either a hallucination or some serious malfunction, and you’re hoping it’s the former.

“So,” you say. “Uh.” You clear your throat and mentally kick yourself for not coming up with something cleverer and with more words.

John leans forward again and brushes your noses together. “So? Uh?” he prompts, that little bit of mocking back in his face and voice.

You shove him by the shoulders. “Can it, derp.”

John sticks his tongue out at you.

You take a deep breath. “Anyway. I should probably get back to my regular schedule of beatin’ nasties an’ wanderin’ the land pretty soon,” you say. “I mean, this vacation’s been nice an’ all, but I got things to do. Cool doesn’t just grow on trees, you know.”

John’s face just _crumples_ , his shoulders slump, his eyes widen, and he basically does a pitch-perfect imitation of a kicked puppy.

You feel awful for about two seconds, then you say, “Hey, derp, what’s with the face? You though I wasn’t gonna ask you to come along?” You shake your head, half-smiling, and you’re a little sorry about the joke, but not that much.

John punches you. Then he punches you again. “That was not at all cool, Dave! That was the polar opposite of cool, even!”

You take your punches gracefully—you deserve them, really. “Yeah, sorry ‘bout that. You do wanna come along, then?”

John rolls his eyes. “Well, obviously! I’ve never been on a proper adventure before—this is gonna be the most awesome thing in the whole history of things!”

You chuckle. “What’re we waitin’ for, then? Let’s get this show on the road—well, on the shitty forest path, anyway.”

You know it’s gonna be more of the same old shit—nothing that you haven’t done before—but you figure you’re gonna have a hard time getting bored with John around. Kid’s like a circus in human form, except this particular circus doesn’t have any creepy-grinning clowns or nasty sawdust, just light and color and brilliance.

That was the sappiest thing you’ve ever thought and you are going to erase it from your memory forever.

Also, Lalonde is going to be so fucking smug about this. Fuck. You hate it when she’s right.


End file.
